Samsung Pay to begin in India in 2017 with AmEx partnership

Seoul , Feb4:Early reports about Samsung Pay reaching Indian shores in the first half of 2017 have found more solid ground, with Mashable suggesting that it will be introduced with American Express as a partner. Mentioning a person familiar with the matter, Mashable reports that Samsung is also exploring opportunities to partner with Mastercard and Visa as well.

Samsung has worked with most major card companies in the world depending on the markets they introduced Samsung Pay to. India is potentially a big market for the South Korean tech giant and its payment service, but will be restricted due to just 2.5 million of premium devices (Galaxy S6, Galaxy S7 and Galaxy Note 5) shipped in India. The true growth of the service may be realised with its introduction to more affordable handsets.

Samsung has started testing the feature in India starting December 2016, with the latest update of Galaxy Note 5 bringing the Samsung Pay app to the system according to Sammobile. The company has also been teasing Galaxy S7 and S7 edge users with a messaging saying “The future of payments is coming soon” when the upgraded their devices to run Android 7.0 Nougat.

Samsung earlier this week launched a mobile web payment service in South Korea for all smartphones that are powered by Android OS. The service called Samsung Pay Mini will let Android users make online transactions in S Korea after downloading a dedicated app.

Samsung’s biggest competitor, Apple is yet to introduce its own payments service, Apple Pay in India. It is still unclear when of if the Cupertino giant will be introducing this service in India.